#i'm dead serious because after watching her documentary

[taylorswiftdebut]

if megan thee stallion is not on rep tv what's the point

[gaykarstaagforever]

I just watched 2008's Lake Mungo. Spoiler alert for this movie you can watch for free on Tubi.

First of all, let me say, there isn't even a LAKE at Lake Mungo. You're full of shit, Australia. Yes the weird miniature Grand Canyon thing is cool. But you really shouldn't use the word 'lake' if it's just a weird patch of desert. I'm filing a citation.

I mean yeah it's extraordinarily beautiful. But it isn't a goddamn lake, you bastards.

Second of all, to all the people online calling this the most terrifying horror movie they have ever seen...you are using 'horror' like Australia uses 'lake.' This isn't a horror movie and it isn't once scary. It is a mystery story with some kind of ghost-thing in it, but that thing itself only runs at the camera once, and it looks like a scary thing the movie already showed us before. There aren't even any jump scares here.

I suppose it is an above-average movie. It is filmed in a faux-documentary style, which means it looks like a fake documentary, and all the actors talk like they are pretending to be in a documentary, not like people in actual documentaries talk. I expected that and it's hard for a director to fix that, so they get a pass. But it is still a thing.

Also a real documentary would never show close-up images of a real teen girl's dessicated corpse, under horror movie lighting. Or a clip of her sex tape. Because that would be illegal.

I don't know why they did the fake documentary thing at all, besides the fact it was 2008 and that was the style at the time. It really doesn't serve the story. And it begs the question why anyone would make a documentary about this entire situation in the first place, because...kind of not that compelling a series of events?

"Dude you totally need to see that documentary about a family who came together through the power of communication, only after their daughter learned to finally speak to her mother after the daughter was dead and a ghost!"

That is ridiculous. No one would make a documentary about that, because that is not reality, it is a sitcom plot.

Works fine as a movie plot. But then just film it like a traditional movie.

As I said, it is an above-average movie. It has lots of twists and turns that make it interesting, and it never explains the mild supernatural weirdness going on, which is welcome, because trying to explain it would just ruin what minor spooky vibe this has.

But this isn't a horror movie. I don't know what it is. It is an allegory about how you should talk to your mom if you're sad. Which is a good-enough message, I suppose? But I already knew that. And also I'm not 16 so it kind of isn't relevant anymore.

If you are pre-30s and love this movie, then I'm not taking it away from you. I think it was made for you. But it certainly wasn't made for me.

...I didn't even think Alice's traumatic experience rose to the level of psychological crisis that the movie implied. Sure, it was something gross and illegal, and people react to things like that differently. But I was expecting something like prostitution or drug dealing with murders, or she joined a devil cult with human sacrifice, or something like that. Her GHOST traveled THROUGH TIME to help the family process the trauma of this.

"At sixteen I had a threesome with our adult neighbors" just doesn't feel like a thing you break the laws of physics from beyond the grave to tell your mother happened to you. I'm sorry. Like that is a serious crime and potentially traumatic, but is it time-traveling ghost traumatic? Eh.

I give it a low B- for being engaging for its brief run time (and being free on Tubi). But it isn't remotely a horror movie and I don't think most adults will get much out of it.

My face while watching Lake Mungo.

[infiniteglitterfall]

LMAOOOOOO OH MY GODDDDDD

I don't think I've ever used LMAO unironically in a post before but ARE YOU FUCKIN SERIOUS, OP.

The world would LOSE THEIR MINDS if ONE of the ISRAELI HOSTAGES showed SIGNS of sexual abuse or torture??!?

First of all: I have not watched the left deny the sexual assault of Israelis by Hamas over, and over, and over, and fucking over, for TEN MONTHS, as a fucking sexual abuse survivor myself, to now see people claiming that anyone CARES about it.

Second, on November 28, 2023, CNN interviewed the father of released 9-year-old Emily Hand.

This statement of his really illustrates our complete ignorance of everything about life under Hamas; all of the very basic things about it that Israelis and Gazans know from deep personal experience; and the complete silencing of Gazan activists by the "pro-Palestinian" movement.

He said that a few days after the attack:

“They just said, ‘We found Emily. She’s dead.’ And I went, ‘Yes!’ I went, ‘Yes!’ and smiled because that is the best news of the possibilities that I knew … So death was a blessing, an absolute blessing.”

And then it turned out they were wrong and she'd been taken hostage.

When she was released she was covered in lice, glassy-eyed with terror, and could not speak above a whisper because she'd been forced to be silent for so long.

Her group of hostages had been kept in such isolation that after 50 days as a hostage, Emily had thought she'd been captive for a year.

Third, on November 29, a Thai worker who was released from Hamas captivity said, “The Jews who were held with me were treated very harshly, sometimes they were beaten with electric cables.”

And 72-year-old Adina Moshe's family, translating for her from Hebrew, told CNN how she had been kept in the dark for 22 hours each day.

Fourth, on December 20, CNN described how 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi was beaten when he arrived in Gaza, was forced to watch videos of Hamas's brutal attack over and over, and threatened at gunpoint to stop crying.

And how 84-year-old Elma Avraham was seriously ill when she returned from Gaza, fighting for her life on a ventilator. Dr. Hagai Levine reported, "You can see on her body that she was dragged from place to place, that she was handcuffed. She has chemical wounds from not treating her basic needs."

Fifth: On January 23, 2024, victims of sexual and gender-based violence by Hamas gathered to speak in front of Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

62-year-old Aviva Adrienne Siegel testified, "The terrorists brought inappropriate clothes, doll clothes and turned the girls into their dolls, dolls on a string with which you can do whatever you want and whenever you want.

"There wasn't a minute that we didn't go through some form of abuse. And they're still there, surviving, barely. I'm still there, my body is there. The boys are also abused, same as what the girls are going through. Maybe they don't get pregnant, but they are also a puppet on a string."

Sixth: On February 15, a clip from Sheryl Sandberg's documentary Screams Before Silence was released, in which hostage Agam Goldstein-Almog relates the story of a fellow hostage's rape.

She also says that about half of the girls and young women she met in captivity told her they had experienced sexual and physical abuse as hostages - "and I haven't talked to all the girls who are there." Most of the hostages she met are still in captivity, if they're still alive.

Seventh: On March 4, the United Nations' envoy on sex crimes during conflict presented a 24-page report, based on more than two weeks of meetings on the ground, which said there was "clear and convincing information that sexual violence including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" was committed against hostages being held in captivity in the Strip by Hamas. And that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that such violence is still ongoing against those hostages still in captivity in Gaza.

Eighth: Israeli hostage Amit Soussana was interviewed in the New York Times about her rape in captivity on March 26, 2024, which is four and a half damn months ago.

Around Oct. 24, the guard, who called himself Muhammad, attacked her. “He came towards me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Ms. Soussana recalled during eight hours of interviews with The New York Times in mid-March. After hitting Ms. Soussana and forcing her to remove her towel, Muhammad groped her, sat her on the edge of the bathtub and hit her again, she said. He dragged her at gunpoint back to the child’s bedroom, a room covered in images of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, she recalled. “Then he, with the gun pointed at me, forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” Ms. Soussana said. Ms. Soussana, 40, is the first Israeli to speak publicly about being sexually assaulted during captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Times, conducted mostly in English, she provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during a 55-day ordeal. Ms. Soussana’s personal account of her experience in captivity is consistent with what she told two doctors and a social worker less than 24 hours after she was freed on Nov. 30. Their reports about her account state the nature of the sexual act; The Times agreed not to disclose the specifics. For months, Hamas and its supporters have denied that its members sexually abused people in captivity or during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. This month, a United Nations report said that there was “clear and convincing information” that some hostages had suffered sexual violence and there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence occurred during the raid, while acknowledging the “challenges and limitations” of examining the issue.

Later in the interview, she talks about torture:

After several minutes, they used duct tape to cover her mouth and nose, tied her feet, and placed the handcuffs on the base of her palms, she said. Then she was suspended, hanging “like a chicken” from a stick stretching between two couches, causing her such pain that she felt that her hands would soon be dislocated. They carried on beating and kicking her, focusing on the soles of her feet, while simultaneously demanding information they believed she was hiding from them, Ms. Soussana said. She still doesn’t understand what exactly they wanted or why they thought she was concealing something, she said. At one point, the head guard brought over a spike, and made as if to poke her eye with it, pulling away just in time, she said. “It was like that for 45 minutes or so,” she said. “They were hitting me and laughing and kicking me, and called the other hostages to see me,” she said.

Ninth: On April 24th, the BBC interviewed Moran Yanai, and wrote: "Moran says she lost 12% of her bodyweight, and her hair, during 54 days in Gaza, and that her body was covered with scars."

I'm sure none of that was from torture. It was just probably that uh... what does international humanitarian law say about hostages, besides that you cannot fucking take hostages and that taking hostages is a fucking war crime?

Let's move on.

Tenth: On April 26th, Sheryl Sandberg's one-hour documentary "Screams Before Silence" was released. It's free to watch on the YouTubes. I have heard it has more testimony. I have not watched it yet.

But!!

We don't have to fucking go to the hostages for examples!! There was nothing BUT torture and rape on Oct 7!!!

People were burned in fires so hot that their fucking BONES burned to ash. They had to bring in volunteer archaeologists to find all the bodies. They only found the body of the last missing person recently. Ten months after her brutal murder by Hamas, PFLP, and PIJ.

A Jordanian doctor who examined the forensic evidence wrote,

In Abu Kabir, I examined incinerated remnants of teeth and bones; charred remains of children; and physical cadavers of victims. I read CT scans of children and adults bound together and burned alive. I viewed images of a decapitated young girl, her child skull tethered to her trunk by only a sliver of decaying skin. Her facial expression, surrounding milk teeth, haunts me still. Across the boundaries of death, her Edward Munch-like scream still echoes. ...I inspected bodies that had been repeatedly stabbed, shot, and crushed. I examined mutilated bodies, restrained with cables, electrical cords, and zipties, still in place post-mortem, and those that had been decapitated and incinerated at temperatures approaching 3,000 degrees Celsius. Sergeant Major Natah Katz from the IDF Rabbinical Unit at the Shura base near Ramle described to me cadavers he received with breasts and genitals hacked off, one with a knife impaled directly into the vagina. The mutilation of sexual organs and breasts, "seemed to be an obsession," he recalled. Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel's National Forensic Center has confirmed to me the same. Indeed, Hamas arrived with orders to mass rape: Phrasebooks belonging to Hamas found in the Re'im area listed phonetic Hebrew commands in Arabic "Take your clothes off!"; " Spread your legs!'; "Get down!" Terabytes of their own video data confirm Hamas raped, amputated breasts, mutilated women's genitals, and committed systematic sexual crimes on both the living and the dead. Necrophilia has been explicitly reported.

At the January 23 Knesset hearing, Zaka representative Haim Langertal stated:

"I saw women who were stripped of their clothes, we saw women who were shot in their private parts, it happened at a party and later in kibbutzim. One was tied up, one had her arms cut off. We found at least 20 burned bodies and found flammable material next to them to burn them while they were still alive. In the houses in the kibbutzim we saw women and men with stripped clothes and mutilated organs. They moved them from room to room and took off their clothes and slaughtered them."

On July 24, Channel 12 news in Israel interviewed a man who had been gang-raped by Hamas.

“They pin you to the ground, you try to resist, they take off your clothes, laugh at you, humiliate you, spit at you. They touched [private] parts, they rape you. "There is a circle, [people] laugh, and you don’t know what to do in the moment, whether you should resist or let it pass, how to deal with the situation. There was a very difficult rape. At some point more people arrived and called for them and so they had to stop. "It’s a very tough moment. Weakness in the entire body. As if your blood is cheap. They were wildly intoxicated, celebrating, laughing with their pistols, with their knives. You disassociate yourself from the situation, but on the other hand experience it very strongly. Very difficult." Asked how he has been coping with the experience, Dalet replied, "It wasn’t simple in the beginning. I was very closed off." He also reported an obsessive fixation on cleanliness in the aftermath of the attack. "A lot, a lot of showers, to get all that energy off me, everything that happened." ...Aware that some are casting doubt on testimony of sexual violence on October 7, Dalet has presented various sources with medical opinions that testify to the harm done to him, as well as sitting for a polygraph test.

Four more survivors of sexual assault by Hamas came forward soon after that, although their stories are not public yet.

The first account of rape by Hamas was from PBS on like October 11th. There were more on the 13th. There have been more, and more, and fucking more.

One of my closest friends, who is vehemently anti-Zionist but also loathes what Hamas did, "hadn't seen anything in the news" about sexual assault by Hamas.

I gave her links. She ignored them and talked about something else.

By December, I had seen more than a dozen examples. I saw a TikTok excerpt of a podcast in which someone who "wasn't saying there might not have been SOME individual rapes on Oct 7," even though she "hadn't heard of any," then flatly denied that there had been a pattern of rape. And said it was a racist and genocidal accusation. Even though she hadn't even bothered to so much as Google whether there had been ONE rape that day.

I made a response in which I listed a bunch of examples of sexual abuse by Hamas. I never posted it, because the wall of rape denial out there was so intense.

On December 5, 2023, the BBC shared this horrifying overview:

Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs. "It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponise women's bodies from ISIS [the Islamic State group] in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia," said Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute of International Relations at Hebrew University. "It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape. It's horrifying to know this." "I spoke with at least three girls who are now hospitalised for a very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched," Minister May Golan told me. "They pretended to be dead and they watched it, and heard everything. And they can't deal with it." Israel's police chief Yaacov Shabtai said that many survivors of the attacks were finding it difficult to talk and that he thought some of them would never testify about what they saw or experienced. "Eighteen young men and women have been hospitalised in mental health hospitals because they could no longer function," he said. Others are reportedly suicidal. One of those working with the teams around survivors told the BBC that some had already killed themselves.

The world would lose their minds if any one of the Israeli hostages showed signs of sexual abuse or torture.

Palestinian men have been subjected to rape and sodomy by a broomstick, which has been proudly justified by an Israeli lawmaker and Zionists are defending that.

Absolutely abhorrent.

[lovelyirony]

Hello friend! I'm in a mood and just feel like reading something sad. Could you pretty please maybe write some sad winteriron? Maybe something to do with terminal illness but it's up to you!

Being human means that there are many things that could happen to you and you can’t help it. 

Like cancer. 

Or being hit by a bus. 

Maybe a heart condition that you didn’t know about until you were thirty-two, had weird chest pains, and then found you didn’t have genetic testing done and neither parent told you about any extensive medical history because they both were estranged from the family. 

Okay. That was specific. 

But Tony was laying in a hospital bed and the doctors told him that he wouldn’t live past forty and he would die of heart failure. 

He feels like he should be hit harder by this. He only has eight years left to live. He shouldn’t be in his kitchen making eggs, he should probably be hysterically calling Rhodey and Pepper and Happy and asking them about funeral arrangements and what he’s going to do and quite possibly if spending the extra money to get the executive suite at the fancy hotel in Switzerland is worth it. 

Except he doesn’t want to. 

Death is a messy process. Not for him, they assured him of that. But everyone asks you questions and your loved ones. You have to figure out where to bury someone if they didn’t do it beforehand. Sometimes you have debates about cremation. Other times about how much you want to spend on a casket. 

He really doesn’t want to look at Rhodey or Pepper or Happy when they talk about that because he knows that their faces will break into tears and he will see the tear tracks when they go home to their houses and cry some more. 

Nonsense. 

If he can hide it, then he will. He doesn’t want to be a bother, it would be...unfortunate. 

Besides. He’s lonely at the top, and there’s no climbing back down the mountain. He won’t pull a Scrooge and get visited by three ghosts. 

So he lives. 

He pulls some risky moves, but nothing that makes Pepper have the “are you up to something serious that could potentially cause my midlife crisis to go off-schedule” talk. 

Again. 

He donates more money to charities and helps people pay off medical bills and walks around New York late at night to wonder why he’s going to die in eight or maybe even seven years instead of the proposed twenty to thirty. (What? He wasn’t going to be too generous, he knew himself.) 

Tony wonders sometimes if he will meet someone and they will make him want to live so much more than he can. It will be like those romantic dramas with rainfall and hair plastered to foreheads and passionate kisses that leave some of the older women teary-eyed and wishing that their husband would do something like that. 

But he’s a genius, so he knows statistics like the back of his hand. 

There will be no one. 

Eight turns into seven. He celebrates by getting absolutely slammed on New Year’s Eve and wakes up to the shittiest radio station blaring. He’s pretty sure they’re playing Maroon 5, which fucking ugh. 

New Year, new resolutions. He doesn’t bother to make one. 

“Why not? You usually make a joke one,” Rhodey says. 

“We are all going to die,” Tony answers. “Why make a resolution if I don’t want to? If I were to die in a year, it wouldn’t really matter.” 

“Okay Lord Byron,” Rhodey says, rolling his eyes. “You want Hot Topic giftcards for your birthday? Huh?” 

Tony laughs. 

Rhodey always knows how to make him laugh. 

Tony doesn’t know how he’s going to make Rhodey laugh when he’s dead. So that’s a breaking point where he stares at the wall and starts to write random memories down, like the time they snuck up onto a hotel’s roof to see the city wake up and the wind chapped their lips and Tony swore that he’d never leave Rhodey. 

Except he is. 

And he realizes that he needs to let Pepper and Rhodey and Happy know that he loves them a lot. So he starts the letters. 

He writes a letter to Pepper to remind her about how much she regrets getting light blue nail polish every single time she gets a manicure, and she should never get it. (Yes, even for a wedding she’s in, get something, anything other than that.) 

He writes a letter to Happy that is basically just wondering about how they can troll asshole celebrities that they know. He doesn’t know, but maybe he will find some dirt so that if Happy ever falls on dire times, he will have some extra cash flow coming in. Not that Tony would let that happen, but say Happy ever did. Maybe someone stole his bank information. Who knows what will happen in seven or six years. 

Summer still sucks. He thinks maybe he’ll like it more, now that he knows that his heart is going to quit. But it still smells like piss and garbage on the streets of New York, people are still blasting shitty music and riding bikes too dangerously, and he still feels gross by two p.m. when he goes outside to face the world. 

Not even the treat of shaved ice helps this. 

“At least I won’t have to face another one in seven years,” Tony murmurs. “Thank god for that.” 

Seven turns into six. 

It’s around this time when an attractive redhead shows up at his office, bends down a bit lower than necessary, and Tony gets the feeling that SHIELD should really train their agents a bit better if they want something out of him. 

He organizes a meeting with Fury, walks in, and states that they cannot afford him. 

“You know that your help would be particularly useful,” Fury says. 

“For you to get what?” He asks. “Don’t bullshit me with some answer about compassion. Peggy Carter was kind, but she wasn’t a damned saint.” 

“There are new...developments.” 

Like the fact that they’ve found Captain America. And Bucky Barnes didn’t fall off into a random ravine, so the four different conspiracy theory documentary videos that Tony watched last year were about five hours of wasted time. 

They need somewhere to stay. Fury wants Tony to foot the bill. 

“What, can’t ask the government for funding?” Tony asks. “I’m sure if they can up the budget for military every year, that covers Cap and his old pal. Hell, I bet they’ll even open up the champagne fridges.” 

“They don’t know about it.” 

“And why would that be? Because you’d rather have idols to yourself?” 

It’s a low-blow. But Tony agrees to take them in. He just doesn’t want to see them, notably because his father was a bit of a Captain America fan, Tony had had a crush on the former sharpshooter when he was a younger guy, and it was all kinds of messed up. 

But he gives them their own little apartment, one of his safehouses. 

“This ain’t little,” Steve mutters to himself, unpacking a box of plates. Natasha has been nice enough to show them around and tell them about the changes she finds relevant. She forced them to listen to what she called ‘the goddess of pop’ in the car, and Bucky nearly clawed out the stereo after “Toxic” came on. 

“Fuckin’ palace,” Bucky mutters. “Who’s is this?” 

“A man in high places,” Natasha answers. “He doesn’t want to be known. Doesn’t exactly play well with others.” 

She leaves them be, and there’s so much that has changed. Steve is still looking for any sign of the past he can find in Bucky, and Bucky...

He’s not who he used to be. He doesn’t remember half the shit that Steve does. Perks of having your brain so fried up that you can barely remember your middle name. 

They eat together in silence. 

“I guess...I guess we have to figure out who we really are,” Steve says. “Because you’re not who I remember, and I’m not...I guess I’m not either.” 

Bucky nods. 

“Do you reckon we’ll like going out dancing?” 

The answer is a strong no, although Steve has to say the drinks have improved a hell of a lot more. He likes the ones that come with the small paper umbrellas. He doesn’t know where they get them, but it gives him an idea for an art project. 

Tony doesn’t hear much about the wonder boys. He doesn’t want to, not really. Natasha just says they’re getting more and more adjusted and she has evidence of Steve Rogers going clubbing. 

“Oh my god,” Tony groans. “Romanoff, do not.” 

“It’s funny.” 

“I don’t wanna know.” 

“What, you jealous that you’re not dancing with him?” 

“Hardly. Blonde and beefy isn’t my type.” 

“Then what is?” 

“Classified.” Tony answered. “Now, is there anything else you want SHIELD to suck out of me?” 

“Well, my manicure funding is getting rather low...” 

Tony snorts, but points towards the door. 

His chest hurts. It’s been happening. He’s actually gotten used to it. In a way, he’s more concerned when it doesn’t hurt. He went to another specialist. They say his death sentence is signed, even if they don’t word it like that. Here’s how it is usually worded: 

“I have a colleague who works at insert-clinic/hospital-here...I can refer you to Dr. So-and-So?” 

They can. But it’s another list of referrals of so-and-so’s and clinics and appointments at the most inopportune times. 

All for nothing, because Tony knows that he can’t be fixed. The human body sometimes works like a machine. But it’s not one. It’d be like Tony calling a dog a wolf. Similar, but no one wants to bring a wolf into their house as a pet. 

He gets a phone call from someone named Deputy Director Hill. 

-

He needs a new arm. 

Barnes needs a new arm. Of course he does. Tony should’ve expected that, of course. Hydra isn’t exactly known for revolutionizing prosthetics or being particularly kind to their projects that they work on. So Tony automatically has a one-up. 

He gets Barnes to come to this mechanic garage, surrounded by old tin signs and vintage cars that cost more than most of the monthly rent of penthouses in New York. 

Bucky does a double-take. 

“Howard?” 

“I hope not,” Tony answers. “Hop up on the chair for me, please. I’m getting you a new arm.” 

“This is fine,” Barnes automatically spouts. Tony can see the damage from here, and can even point out that the arm’s reaction time is probably the worst it has been currently. 

“If you want to stick to your Great Depression ideals, then by all means be my guest and go bitch in a grocery store about prices,” Tony responds dryly. “But if you want an arm that’s gonna be actually good, then sit.” 

So he does. 

Tony looks incredibly similar to his father. But there’s something different about him. Something softer, almost. Bucky didn’t know Howard nearly as well as others did, but he knew that Tony wasn’t his father. 

“How are you adjusting to the city?” Tony asks. 

"Still the shithole we all know and love,” Bucky swears. “I think the rats got bigger.” 

“They did. It’s amusing and horrifying at the same time. You ride the subway yet?” 

“Yes and I’ve come to terms with it. Lots of new things to learn about it.” 

Barnes’ visits become more frequent. They talk about New York stuff. Tony tells him all about the fun events that have happened that he missed while he was doing time as an icicle. 

It’s nice, talking to him. Tony finally has someone who understands fatalistic humor and doesn’t respond with 

“That’s scary, Tony.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Bucky just says “cheers” and decides to tell Tony about the time he nearly died in 1992 because he lost his footing on the Eiffel Tower. 

Tony laughs, and laughs harder than he thought he had in a long time. 

-

Six turns into five. 

Bucky gets closer, and they have...something. He’s not sure what it is yet, but he knows that they go on breakfast dates most of the time and he knows the coffee orders by heart. 

“I think you’ve found someone,” Pepper says, teasing. “Look at you.” 

“Yeah, look at me,” Tony murmurs. 

He has five years left. That’s plenty of time to date someone and break up, right? 

Except. 

It’s...wonderful to date Bucky. They go all over, have fun trying the shittiest restaurants in town, and even get Steve to get out more and socialize with the group. 

They date and celebrate holidays together and have fun candles and--

Five turns into four. 

“Not that bad,” Tony whispers to himself when he’s getting ready for bed. 

“What’s not bad?” Bucky asks. 

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Tony says. “Just got a new toothpaste.” 

They watch It’s a Wonderful Life and Tony can’t really focus, not when he’s thinking about the fact that he still hasn’t picked out a design for his urn. 

Not when he realizes that he needs to break up with Bucky and make it a whole big scene so that no one will talk to him. It has to be about two years before the date, he thinks. 

He goes to another Dr. So-and-So. They say he might actually have one more year, but who knows. 

He doesn’t. 

But he wakes up with Bucky every day and they make breakfast, and he thinks that maybe he could tell him? Maybe? 

The words get stuck in his mouth. 

He can’t. 

He meets with his lawyer for the will. 

“Why making sudden changes?” 

“Just like to shake things up,” Tony says with a smile. “Never know what’s going to happen, right?” 

“You are right about that,” the lawyer says. He’s a bit uncomfortable. Tony Stark looks at him like he knows that his life is short and that something else will come up. But it’s not the lawyer’s job to ask if things really are okay, and it’s not like Tony would tell him anyway. 

So he makes the changes to the will. 

Tony looks at Bucky as he’s napping, face so peaceful. 

He can’t ruin that. 

[ptw30]

I agree with the "No MFE/Atlas" spin off but only because I'm like the only one who didn't like them after season 7 (I'm not watching season 8). They were the most one dimensional characters ever but everyone else just lost their shit. And I'm over here like "Why? They're action character cliches barely stretched over vaguely human shaped cardboard cut outs."

First, good for you. Save yourself from Season 8. 

Second, you’re new around here (my blog), aren’t ya? I’m not a fan of the MFE pilots. Nothing against them, other than James (if the EPs ever wanted me to like him, then they shouldn’t have introduced him making fun of Keith about the fact that his parents were supposedly dead). I just have no real need to like them.  

No doubt, “Day Forty-Seven,” was one of the better episodes of Season 8, which highlighted Kinkade and Rizavi, but…okay, I’m not going to lie. I was waiting for them to try to speak to the captain of the ship. You’re doing a documentary about the ship, and idk. You don’t want to at least catch a glimpse of the captain?

But then - I was still looking for the paladins, which I should. It’s still their series, but I don’t know. I was just bored during the pilots’ screen time. And Colleen’s. And don’t get me started on Colleen’s rant in the first episode. 

(YES! PIDGE SAVED HER FATHER AND BROTHER, AND YOU PUNISH HER. ARE YOU FREAKIN’ SERIOUS? NO, IT’S NOT FUNNY. IT’S STUPID. ) 

…well, enough of me rambling about things in Season 8, which you don’t even get, which is good. Point being - I really just don’t have any need to learn about the pilots, and even Veronica, who is just awesome, doesn’t even banter with Lance like a sibling. I would say that if they were better written, I might love them, but tbh - I just want more Shiro. 

…I’m easy. Don’t get that around. 

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 38

Early 60′s Sidney Lumet X 2:

✳️✳️✳️ “...You have a poet in you, but it’s a damn morbid one...”

Lumet’s 1962 powerful version of O’Neill’s stage play Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Superb ensemble performance by Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, and very young Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell.

A dysfunctional family of three drunks and a morphine fiend mother bicker and struggles with their own shortcomings, responsibilities and madness.

✳️✳️✳️ The Pawnbroker (1964), first mainstream American film to deal with the psychology of a holocaust survivor. But the combination of a bitter & lonely concentration camp survivor who became a Harlem pawnbroker, the black & Puerto Ricans stereotypes, the money as the only value left for the desperate Jew, Etc. didn’t gel. 3/10.

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Udo Kier’s plays the lead in the new Swan Song, a daring & heartbreaking tear-jerker about a very old gay hairdresser, the “Liberace of Sandusky, Ohio”, who escapes his nursing home in order to style a dead woman's hair.

Beautiful! The best film of the week.

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A thought-provoking documentary, I, Pastafari, about recent efforts by adherents of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (”FSM”) to be accepted as a “real”, non-satirical religion, mostly in The Netherlands and in Germany. "It is a serious offense to mock God". I found it an interesting argument on claimed faith and the nature of traditions. Long live Bobby Henderson!

R’amen!

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Yves Montand X 3:

✳️✳️✳️ First re-watch in over 20 years: Claude Berri’s ‘The Water of the Hills’ stories, AKA  Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Two classic period pieces of classic Provence-chic with Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and Yves Montand. Deception, betrayal and revenge. 7+/10

✳️✳️✳️ First watch: Melville’s cool heist ‘policier’ Le Cercle Rouge, with Alain Delon’s glued-on porn-'stache. The ‘Red Circle’ is actually a ‘Red Herring’, as the Buddha quote in the epigraph was made up by Melville: The divergent  paths of unknowing men will come together inside the Red Circle... Yeah sure.

Now, off to see Rififi...

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Lennon’s Last Weekend, a Nothing documentary centered around the week-long interviews that Lennon gave DJ Andy Peebles of the BBC up until December 6, 1980, 2 days before he was killed.

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2 Directed by Tony Gilroy, again:

✳️✳️✳️ “I'm Shiva, the God of death.”

Michael Clayton must be my absolute favorite film from the last 20 years. I’ve seen it 12-15 times, and it’s perfect in every sense: every single frame, or cut, the soundtrack, his son Henry’s 'Realm and Conquest' sub-plot, the horses, Monsanto’s Karen Crowder’s double-speak... Every time I’m reminded of it, I'm ‘forced’ to watch it again. 

10/10

✳️✳️✳️ 2 years after Michael Clayton, Gilroy assembled many of the same players to do Duplicity: Tom Wilkinson & Denis O’Hare acting, James Newton Howard’s score, Robert Elswit DP, Etc. but this convoluted romance between two industrial spies who double and triple cross each other and everybody else is too clever, with too many complex plot twists. 5/10   

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Not a big David Lynch fan, and re-watching Blue Velvet for the second time after many years, I disliked it even more. The brilliant beginning, up to the discovery of the severed ear definitely signifies “This is Andalusian dog for the ‘80″. The rest of it, the sexual slavery, the masochism, voyeurism, fetishism of vintage pop songs left me completely cold.

(Photo Above) 

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Based on Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short is another of my regular Guilty Pleasures housing market crash films. Because it’s about my 2004-2010 real estate investment career, and because I was there. 9/10

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More about the shuttered, big American Scam, Frontline’s The Retirement Gamble. I can’t believe that for half my life I let myself live within and (somehow) accept the system. Thanks, Sammy.

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“It’s the corn cubes!...”

Beatboxer Reggie Watts's A Live At Central Park (2012) - Funniest shit of the week!

(Prompt by a refresher on Metafilter.)

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Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh‘s pathological debut film. It influenced me so much, I even had the same wooden cassette cases, to keep my tapes. The four then-unknown actors were all incredible. 100% mature film, not by a 26 year old pisher. The only vague, unconvincing scene is Graham opening up to Ann at the end. 9+/10

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...Compared that to Bitter Moon, another late 80′s erotic ‘thriller’, Polanski’s unwatchable Merde. The man directed ‘Chinatown’ for Christ sake! Four terrible performances (including Polanski’s wife, Mariel Hemingway-lite), in a ‘daring’ exploration of ‘depraved’ sexuality. Truly awful.

1/10

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2 X National Lampoon:

✳️✳️✳️ Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, a 2015 documentary film. I wasn’t familiar much with that history.

✳️✳️✳️ And so, National Lampoon’s Animal House - First watch. I wish I saw it 40 years ago, then maybe it would have worth a chuckle or two. As it is, it was the worst film I saw this week.

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2 short documentaries:

✳️✳️✳️ Ice Ball, a short Vimeo story about Ice Harvesting in northern Minnesota.

✳️✳️✳️ The driver is red, an animated short about the hunt for Eichmann, told by an Israeli Mossad agent.

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The Swarm, a new French horror movie about anthropo-entomophagy (insect eating): Blood sucking grasshoppers!

Meh.

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(My complete movie list is here)